Which World War I regiment did J.R.R. Tolkien serve with at the Battle of the Somme?

J.R.R. Tolkien served with the Lancashire Fusiliers at the Battle of the Somme during World War I.

After studying at Oxford, Tolkien was commissioned as a temporary second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers. He served on the Western Front in 1916 and took part in the Battle of the Somme, one of the war’s largest and bloodiest offensives.

Tolkien developed trench fever and was sent back to England in October 1916. Most of the members of his close school-friend group known as the T.C.B.S. were killed in the war, an experience that profoundly affected him.

Readers sometimes treat Middle-earth’s battles as direct fictional versions of the Somme. Tolkien rejected simple one-to-one allegorical readings, but his wartime service, loss, and experience of industrialized conflict formed an important part of his personal background as a writer.